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BUFFALO, N.Y. — Kevin Kline flicked his cigarette and considered the recent transformation of his city’s main drag. He turned around and found the perfect example: an ornate, 19th-century brick arcade. It used to be so dead that the municipality bought the building in the 90s to save it from the wrecking ball, he said. Now it’s connected to a busy market with food stalls and a pub and houses the art centre where he works as education director.

Like many Buffalonians up and down Main St., Kline credits much of the action to the four-wheeled mainstays of modern life: motor vehicles. They were outlawed on the central stretch of Buffalo for the better part of three decades, only to return in recent years as the city revamps the downtown artery block-by-block, making room for two-way car traffic and parking alongside bike lanes and the tracks previously reserved for the train that has rattled through the central corridor since 1986.

As deadly traffic collisions spike in Toronto this year — and the city prepares for a car-free pilot project on a portion of King St. W. — Buffalo offers an intriguing counter-example to the push to make room for non-motorized modes of transport on city streets. The return of cars on Main St. is seen by many as a vital part of a downtown renaissance in the city across the Niagara River.

“Buffalo is a driving city, and when a strip this long doesn’t have traffic,” said Kline, pausing to think. “It’s been a lot nicer having people on the ground.”

Further south, Autumn Reinard was scooping ice cream for customers, one of two businesses she has helped open on Main St. in the past six months.

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Kevin Kline, education director at Squeaky Wheel art centre, is among the new wave of workers and business-owners on Buffalo's revamped Main Street. (Alex Ballingall/toronto star)

“It’s been awesome,” she said between hearty descriptions of the stuffed pretzels and spiced ciders on offer in the shop. “It brings a lot more people in, even if they’re just getting change for the meter. It’s been more alive and more positive.”

To make sense of this, one must dial back the clock to the 1970s. Where once Buffalo was a vibrant industrial centre of the Great Lakes region, a powerhouse place that housed the legal office of President Grover Cleveland, the city was in decline by the second half of the 20th century, explained Daniel Hess, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning. The downtown core fell dormant, like many similar-sized cities, as residents flocked to the lawn-scapes and shopping malls of the surrounding suburbs.

“All the industry and manufacturing was gone,” said Hess. “It’s a city built for 600,000 people and now it’s less than 300,000.”

To kickstart business and activity in the city centre, planners started working on a scheme for Main St. The idea was to bring in a street car line to connect the banks and shopping centres along the street, Hess said, but also try to replicate the suburban mall experience with a pedestrian promenade. Trains would rattle by routinely, and there would be no cars. The city hired a Toronto-based firm, Moriyama & Teshima, to design the strip, and construction began in 1979. Workers ripped up the street, installed tracks and expanded the sidewalks, and the pedestrian mall was finished by the mid-80s.

The whole thing came to be seen as a mistake by a lot of people, said Hess. “The death of the downtown was given a generous helping hand by taking cars away,” he said.

Autumn Reinard manages two new businesses along Buffalo's revamped Main Street. "It's been more alive and more positive," she says. (Alex Ballingall/toronto star)

Alan Dewart, a local real estate developer involved in several projects along Main St., said the area became a “dead zone.” Many businesses shut down, and there was a dearth of pedestrians on the expanded promenades.

“It was a real, real bad part of Buffalo’s downtown history. It didn’t work, in a nutshell,” Dewart said.

The city decided it was time to change direction in 2008. It began with a US$2.8 million refurbishment of the area around Shea’s Theater, a historic venue in the city. Curb planters and new benches were installed, along with bike lanes and the re-introduction of two-way motor vehicle traffic. That was followed by the US$21-million reconstruction of the 500 Block of the street, as well as a $8-million US construction on the 600 Block.

The new streetscape was followed by upgrades to the hockey arena complex that hosts the Buffalo Sabres — which sits at the southern end of Main St., beyond a stretch that still has several boarded up storefronts where the pedestrian mall hasn’t been revamped — as well as new real estate projects. Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, said in 2014 that the initiative has given the city a 2-to-1 return on its investment.

“It’s been very, very successful,” said Dewart, adding that it’s clear in hindsight that the car-free Main St. was a mistake. “It’s amazing how so much time and money and blood and sweat could have been saved,” he said. “You’d think they should have known.”

The south end of Main Street hasn't been re-furbished. There are more boarded up shops with less traffic. (Alex Ballingall/toronto star)

But don’t go rushing off to City Hall in a bid to keep cars rolling through all of Toronto’s main drags. Hess, the University at Buffalo professor, points out that Toronto and Buffalo are very different cities. He suggested Toronto may be more like New York City, where car-free projects in Manhattan are seen as a progressive means to make room for pedestrians and cyclists on already-jammed streets.

“I think there could be similar conditions in Toronto,” he said.

Either way, Amie Ford is happy with how downtown Buffalo is changing. Her only concern is that she has to remind herself to listen and look for cars when she crosses Main St.

“It was probably less lively back then,” she said. “You see people walking dogs and everything now.”

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